


alleys of manhattan

by eirana



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: I was cleaning out my fic folder, M/M, Shadowy Eldritch Beings who can't be trusted, implied dark!steve i guess, short and kinda weird, this is a tad melodramatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23927641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirana/pseuds/eirana
Summary: Manhattan doesn’t have any alleys. It used to. They were everywhere in the city, cracks where the dark things could slip out and feed. Most people have forgotten them.Steve hasn’t.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	alleys of manhattan

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2014(?) after a mini-rant from my girlfriend about how there aren't alleyways in Manhattan, damnit, why do people keep saying there are. My brain decided that meant that alleys in the city are clearly some sort of portal to a realm home to eldritch shadow beings. Yeah, idk.

Manhattan doesn’t have any alleys. It used to. They were everywhere in the city, cracks where the dark things could slip out and feed. Most people have forgotten them.

Steve hasn’t.

After the ice, he seeks them out. He walks through the city and finds nothing. They’re all gone. Their absence is just another thing he’s lost. This, of all things, is what breaks him. Not all dark things were to be feared.

( _He weeps for us_ , say the things hiding in the dark.

They remember Steve. They remember him as he was: small, strong, and furious at everything. They’d fed on him, on the things he had yet to do. They’d driven away those foolish enough to try to harm what was theirs. They remember.)

Steve begins to see. A flicker in the corner of his eye, a shadow he sees for only a moment. Things he can ignore.

Then the voices come.

(They draw him back into their realm and teach him how to traverse the alleys once more. They cling to him when he leaves their alleys for the streets full of those who have forgotten them. They cling and observe, touch and taste. They are legion and they soothe some of his grief.)

It’s enough. For a while, it’s enough. Then SHIELD falls and the Winter Soldier appears. Steve can feel what they did to him and it turns his stomach.

Steve asks them what he should do. They tell him how to get Bucky back.

(They tell him one specific way. They’ve missed his anger, bright and beautiful, incandescent. He brings them blood and pain, rage focused so tightly it cuts like a knife. They shiver in glee, because nothing had tasted better than the possibility of him burning the world for one man, and now he has.

He is _theirstheirstheirs_ , and he is the price the world will pay for trying to lock them away.)

Steve finds Bucky. He knows Steve but nothing else. He holds tight and only lets go when Steve ventures back into the alleys. Bucky refuses to tread there for a long time. 

(They fix the broken one—for given values of fix.

They have two now, two souls bound to them with blood and rage and grief and pain and hate and terrible love.)

Steve leaves the dark behind less and less. The dark reunited him with Bucky. They’re together and nothing can separate them ever again. Why would he want to leave? Still, Bucky coaxes him away from the alleys, into the sunlight and the people, away from the dark things that cling too tightly to Steve.

(They silence the broken one’s doubts in time. They gently remind him that they can take the memory of their own away from him again. They can take Steve, and Bucky will be helpless to stop them.)

Bucky would fight it if he had anywhere to go, but he doesn’t know anything but his masters, old and new, and Steve. Always Steve. Bucky doesn’t need to fight. He’s done enough of that.

He’d told Steve to the end of the line. He suspects there is no end, now.

Steve is so radiantly happy. He shines like the sun, deadly and beautiful and essential.

(He is _theirstheirstheirs_ forever.

He’d wept for them. He really shouldn’t have.)


End file.
